I was fully prepared, the following morning, to have my brother call upon me at an early hour and inform me icily that he could not have his home treated as a bawdy house for soldiery. I knew so well the form of such a discourse. The honor of his position, the welfare of his young son, the delicate feelings of Phillipa, our sister-in-law, and although the times were strange and war had done odd things to conduct, certain standards of behavior were necessary for people of our standing. I was in fact already planning to throw myself upon my sister Cecilia’s mercy over at Mothercombe, and had my excuses already framed, when I heard the familiar sound of tramping feet. I bid Matty look from the window, and she told me that a company of infantry was marching up the drive, wearing the Grenvile shields. This, I felt, would add fuel to the flames that must already be burning in my brother’s breast.
Curiosity, however, was too much for me, and instead of remaining in my apartment like a child who had misbehaved, I bade the servants carry me downstairs to the hall. Here I discovered my brother Jo in heated argument with a fresh-faced young officer, who declared coolly, and with no sign of perturbation, that his general, having decided that Radford was most excellently placed for keeping close observation on the enemy battery at Mount Batten, wished to commandeer certain rooms of the house for himself as a temporary headquarters, and would Mr. John Harris be good enough to show the officer a suite of rooms commanding a northwestern view?
Mr. Harris, added the officer, would be put to no inconvenience, as the General would be bringing his own servants, cooks, and provisions. “I must protest,” I heard my brother say, “that this is a highly irregular proceeding. There are no facilities here for soldiers, I myself am hard pressed with work about the county, and…”
“The General told me,” said the young officer, cutting him short, “that he had a warrant from His Majesty authorizing him to take over any place of residence in Devon or Cornwall that should please him. He already has a headquarters at Buckland, Werrington, and Fitzford, and there the inhabitants were not permitted to remain, but were forced to find room elsewhere. Of course, he does not propose to deal thus summarily with you, sir. May I see the rooms?”
My brother stared at him tight lipped for a moment, then, turning on his heel, escorted him up the stairs which I had just descended. I was very careful to avoid his eye.
During the morning the company of foot proceeded to establish themselves in the north wing of the mansion, and, watching from the long window in the hall, I saw the cooks and pantry boys stagger towards the kitchen entrance bearing plucked fowls, and ducks, and sides of bacon, besides crate after crate of wine. Phillipa sat at my side, stitching her sampler.
“The King’s General,” she said meekly, “believes in doing himself well. I have not seen such fare since the siege of Plymouth started. Where do you suppose he obtains all his supplies?”
I examined my nails, which were in need of trimming, and so did not have to look her in the face.
“From the many houses,” I answered, “that he commandeers.”
“But I thought,” said Phillipa, with maddening persistency, “that Percy told us Sir Richard never permitted his men to loot.”
“Possibly,” I said with great detachment, “Sir Richard looks upon ducks and burgundy as perquisites of war.”
She went to her room soon after, and I was alone when my brother Jo came down the stairs.
“Well,” he said grimly, “I suppose I have you to thank for this invasion.”
“I know nothing about it,” I answered.
“Nonsense. You planned it together last night.”
“Indeed we did not.”
“What were you doing then, closeted with him in your chamber?”
“The time seemed to pass,” I said, “in reviving old memories.”
“I thought,” he said, after a moment’s pause, “that your present condition, my dear Honor, would make talk of your former intimacy quite intolerable, and any renewal of it beyond question.”
“So did I,” I answered.
He looked down at me, his lips pursed.
“You were always shameless as a girl,” he said. “We spoiled you most abominably, Robin, your sisters, and I. And now at thirty-four you behave like a dairymaid.”
He could not have chosen an epithet, to my mind, more unfortunate.
“My behavior last night,” I said, “was very different from a dairymaid.”
“I am glad to hear it. But the impression, upon us here below, was to the contrary. Sir Richard’s reputation is notorious, and for him to remain within a closed apartment for nearly an hour and three-quarters alone with a woman can conjure up, to my mind, one thing and one thing only.”
“To my mind,” I answered, “it can conjure up at least a dozen.”
After that I knew I must be damned forever, and was not surprised when he left me without further argument, except to express a wish that I might have some respect for his roof, though “ceiling” would have been the apter word, in my opinion.
I felt brazen and unrepentant all the day, and when Richard appeared that evening, in tearing spirits, commanding dinner for two in the apartment his soldiers had prepared for him, I had a glow of wicked satisfaction that my relatives sat below in gloomy silence, while I ate roast duck with the General overhead.
“Since you would not come to Buckland,” he said, “I had perforce to come to you.”
“It is always a mistake,” I said, “to fall out with a woman’s brothers.”
“Your brother Robin has ridden off with Berkeley’s horse to Tavistock,” he answered, “and Percy I am sending on a delegation to the King. That leaves only Jo to be disposed of. It might be possible to get him over to the Queen of France.”
He tied a knot in his handkerchief as a reminder.
“And how long,” I asked, “will it take before Plymouth falls before you?” He shook his head, and looked dubious.
“They have the whole place strengthened,” he said, “since our campaign in Cornwall, and that’s the devil of it. Had His Majesty abided by my advice, and tarried here a fortnight only with his army, we would have the place today. But no. He must listen to Hyde and march to Dorset, and here I am, back again where I was last Easter, with less than a thousand men to do the job.”
“You’ll never take it then,” I asked, “by direct assault?”
“Not unless I can increase my force,” he said, “by nearly another thousand. I’m already recruiting hard up and down the county. Rounding up deserters, and enlisting new levies. But the fellows must be paid. They won’t fight otherwise, and I don’t blame ’em. Why the devil should they?”
“Where,” I said, “did you get this burgundy?”
“From Lanhydrock,” he answered. “I had no idea Jack Robartes had laid down so good a cellar. I’ve had every bottle of it removed to Buckland.” He held his goblet to the candlelight, and smiled.
“You know that Lord Robartes sacked Menabilly simply and solely because you had pillaged his estate?”
“He is an extremely dull-witted fellow.”
“There is not a pin to choose between you where pillaging is concerned. A Royalist does as much damage as a rebel. I suppose Dick told you that Gartred was one of us at Menabilly?”
“What was she after?”
“The Duchy silver plate.”
“More power to her. I could do with some of it myself, to pay my troops.”
“She was very friendly with Lord Robartes.”
“I have yet to meet a man that she dislikes.”
“I think it very probable that she acts spy for Parliament.”
“There you misjudge her. She would do anything to gain her own ends but that. You forget the old saying: that, of the three families in Cornwall, a Godolphin was never wanting in wit, a Trelawney in courage, or a Grenvile in loyalty. Gartred was born and bred a Grenvile, no matter if she beds with every fellow in the Duchy.”
A brother, I thought, will always hold a brief for a sister. Perhaps Robin at this moment was doing the same thing for me.
Richard had risen and was looking through the window towards the distant Cattwater and Plymouth.
“Tonight,” he said quietly, “I’ve made a gambler’s throw. It may come off. It may be hopeless. If it succeeds, Plymouth can be ours by daybreak.”
“What do you mean?”
He continued looking through the window to where the lights of Plymouth flickered.
“I am in touch with the second in command in the garrison,” he said softly, “a certain Colonel Searle. There is a possibility that for the sum of three thousand pounds he will surrender the city. Before wasting further lives, I thought it worth my while to assay bribery.”
I was silent. The prospect was hazardous, and somehow smelt unclean.
“How have you set about it?” I asked at length.
“Young Jo slipped through the lines tonight at sunset,” he answered, “and will, by now, be hidden in the town. He bears upon him my message to the colonel, and a firm promise of three thousand pounds.”
“I don’t like it,” I said. “No good will come of it.”
“Maybe not,” he said indifferently, “but at least it was worth trying. I don’t relish the prospect of battering my head against the gates of Plymouth the whole winter.”
I thought of young Jo and his impudent brown eyes.
“Supposing,” I said slowly, “that they catch your Joseph?”
Richard smiled. “The lad,” he answered, “is quite capable of looking after himself.”
But I thought of Lord Robartes as I had seen him last, with muddied boots, and the rain upon his shoulders, sour and surly in defeat, and I knew how much he must detest the name of Grenvile.
“I shall be rising early,” said Richard, “before you are awake. If, by midday, you hear a salvo from every gun inside the garrison, you will know that I have entered Plymouth, after one swift and very bloody battle.” He took my face in his, and kissed it, and then bade me good night. But I found it hard to sleep. The excitement of his presence in the house had turned to anxiety and strain. I knew, with all the intuition in my body, that he had gambled wrong.
I heard him ride off, with his staff, about five thirty in the morning, and then dead tired, my brain chasing itself in circles, I fell into a heavy sleep.
When I awoke it was past ten o’clock. A gray day, with a nip of autumn in the air. I had no wish for breakfast, nor even to get up, but stayed there in my bed. I heard the noises of the house, and the coming and going of the soldiers in their wing, and at twelve o’clock I raised myself upon my elbow and looked towards the river. Five past twelve. A quarter past. Half past twelve. There was no salvo from the guns. There was not even a musket shot. It rained at two, then cleared, then rained again. The day dragged on, dull, interminable. I had a sick feeling of suspense all the while. At five o’clock Matty brought me my dinner on a tray, which I picked at with faint appetite. I asked her if she had heard any news, but she said she knew of none. But later, when she had taken away my tray, and come to draw my curtains, her face was troubled.
“What is the matter?” I asked.
“It’s what one of Sir Richard’s men was saying, down there to the sentry,” she answered, “some trouble today in Plymouth. One of their best young officers taken prisoner by Lord Robartes, and condemned to death by Council of War. Sir Richard has been endeavoring all day to ransom him, but has not succeeded.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What will happen to the officer?”
“The soldier did not say.”
I lay back again on my bed, my hands over my eyes, to dim the candle. Foreboding never played me wrong, not when I was seized with it for a whole night and day. Maybe perception was a cripple quality. Later I heard the horses coming up the drive and the sentries standing to attention. Footsteps climbed the stairs, slowly, heavily, and passed along to the rooms in the northern wing. A door slammed, and there was silence. It was a long while that I waited there, lying on my back. Just before midnight I heard him walk along the passage and his hand fumbled a moment on the latch of my door. The candles were blown, and it was darkness. The household slept. He came to my side, and knelt before the bed. I put my hand on his head, and held him close to me. He knelt thus for many moments without speaking.
“Tell me,” I whispered, “if it will help you.”
“They hanged him,” he said, “above the gates of the town where we could see him. I sent a company to cut him down, but they were mown down by gunfire. They hanged him, before my eyes.” Now that suspense was broken, and the long day of strain behind me, I was aware of the feeling of detachment that possesses all of us when a crisis has been passed, and the suffering is not one’s own.
This was Richard’s battle. I could not fight it for him. I could only hold him in the darkness.
“That rat Searle,” he said, his voice broken, strangely unlike my Richard, “betrayed the scheme, and so they caught the lad. I went myself beneath the walls of the garrison to parley with Robartes. I offered him any terms of ransom or exchange. He gave me no answer. And while I stood there, waiting, they strung him up above the gate…”
He could not continue. He lay his head upon me, and I held his hands that clutched so fiercely at the patchwork quilt upon the bed.
“Tomorrow,” I said, “it might have been the same. A bullet through the head. A thrust from a pike. An unlucky stumble from his horse. This happens every day. An act of war. Look upon it in that way. Jo died in your service, as he would wish to do.”
“No,” he said, his voice muffled. “It was my fault. On me the blame, now, tonight, for all eternity. An error in judgment. The wrong decision.”
“Jo would forgive you. Jo would understand.”
“I can’t forgive myself. That’s where the torture lies.”
I thought then of all the things that I would want to bring before him. How he was not infallible, and never had been, and that this stroke of Fate was but a grim reminder of the fact. His own harsh measures to the enemy had been repaid, measure for measure. Cruelty begat cruelty, betrayal gave birth to treachery, the qualities that he had fostered in himself these past years were now recoiled upon him.
The men of Parliament had not forgotten his act of perfidy in the spring, when, feigning to be their friend, he had deserted to the King, bearing their secrets. They had not forgotten the executions without trial, the prisoners condemned to death in Lydford Castle, nor the long line of troopers hanging from the gibbets in the market square of Saltash. And Lord Robartes, with his home Lanhydrock ravaged and laid waste, his goods seized, had seen rough justice and revenge in taking the life of the messenger who bore an offer of bribery and corruption in his pocket.
It was the irony of the devil, or Almighty God, that the messenger should have been no distant kinsman, but Richard Grenvile’s son. All this came before me in that moment when I held Richard in my arms. And now, I thought, we have come to a crisis in his life. The dividing of the ways. Either to learn from this single tragedy of a boy’s death that cruelty was not the answer, that dishonesty dealt a returning blow, that accepting no other judgment but his own would in a space of time make every friend an enemy; or to learn nothing, to continue through the months and years deaf to all counsel, unscrupulous, embittered, the Skellum Grenvile with a price upon his head, the Red Fox who would be pointed to for evermore as lacking chivalry, a hated contrast to his well-beloved brother.
“Richard…,” I whispered. “Richard, my dear and only love…” But he rose to his feet, he went slowly to the window, and, pulling aside the curtains, stood there with the moonlight on his hands that held the sword, but his face in shadow.
“I shall avenge him,” he said, “with every life I take. No quarter any more. No pardons. Not one of them shall be spared. From this moment I shall have one aim only in my life, to kill rebels. And to do it as I wish I must have command of the army; otherwise I fail. I will brook no dispute with my equals, I will tolerate no orders from those senior to me. His Majesty made me General in the West, and by God, I swear that the whole world shall know it.”
I knew then that his worse self possessed him, soul and body, and that nothing that I could say or do could help him in the future. Had we been man and wife, or truly lovers, I might, through the close day-by-day intimacy, have learned to soften him; but Fate and circumstance had made me no more than a shadow in his life, a phantom of what might have been. He had come to me tonight because he needed me, but neither tears nor protestations nor assurances of my love and tenderness to all eternity would stay him now from the pursuit of the dim and evil star that beckoned to him.